“Oh hey, I’m fine! Yeah, how are you?”
People love to narrow down your agony to single causes. It makes it simple for them to understand: X hurt you, so you feel suicidal and depressed because of that.
But no, it’s not because of that. Well, it is, but also isn’t. The feeling doesn’t just manifest from thin air, nor is it conjured up at will as if I am a witch of the psychoemotional school of magic. It’s actually the opposite; I did not sink back into the void from a platform of happiness. Rather, the happiness I felt gave me the push to try climbing. Without that push, I slip back through the cracks I try so hard to conceal every day of my life.
Even my body has become so good at masking it that any self-harm scars I have are healed and relatively invisible. Ironic that the only visible, physical indication that anything’s wrong with me on the inside has adapted to lying.
Nobody really knows that practically every day before and after work I am listening to music and holding back the tears. I feel my body tremble, my lip curls - the early telltale sign that I’m gonna cry - and my face is paying the price for it with some rather ghastly dark circles at the tear ducts, as though I was hit by two tiny fists.
I’m often asked why. What a complicated answer. I try my best to give a summary of the most recent events. But it’s never good enough for them! It’s not a reason worth this reaction, I’m young, I have my life ahead, etc. It’s almost insulting how they just assume that prior to that, I was the poster child for ideality. You don’t crank the dial from 0 to 100 in one day. I made an offhand comment once about taking antidepressants and their (paraphrased) response was “Oh, you’re too young to need those kinds of pills!” Well, I’m sorry to tell you, but I would have been too young if I had kept trying to kill myself. So the pills seem rather mild in comparison.
Everyone has their solutions and opinions. Do this, do that, you’ll feel better! How do I go back 26 years of my life and try to undo the damage that brought me to this point? I’m prone to being chastised for regretting. Regretting something is not necessarily that I wouldn’t have done it again, if given the chance. Regret simply means that I feel so much sorrow over the overall outcome of the issue that it’s still affecting me even now.
I would have done it all again. I would have fallen in love, would have taken chances. I would have tried and failed and tried again. The only puzzle piece that’s missing from each picture is the hindsight you only gain from the future. But that one puzzle piece can taint the entire image and make it very, very blue. And I mean blue in the emotional way. It’s no coincidence everyone I know relates me to Sadness from Inside Out.
It’s not that ONE thing that made me like this. It’s not THAT other thing in my past, either. It’s everything. It’s family, it’s friends, it’s lovers, it’s circumstances, it’s my body, my mind, it’s as “there” as the air I breathe. It’s not a flu or a period that goes away eventually. I live this all the time. If others are humans that drown in water then I am the fish and it’s as natural as home.
It’s nothing to write home about. It’s not a fact I brag over at fancy dinner parties. It’s rather embarrassing. Admitting to suicidal ideation, depression, possible BPD, anxiety, strong desire to harm oneself, waking up every morning disoriented, there are usually three kinds of people: those who truly get it, those who brush it off as being overdramatic nonsense because life is yolo, and those who become indifferent and brush me as one of “those” people. The pretentious mentally ill who think Poe’s poetry is romantic rather than gut-wrenching. There is no romance in this hell I’m living.
Yet somehow, if I don’t speak of it, I feel like I am strangling a part of myself.
“Oh yeah, I’m doing great honestly! Just work and stuff, sewing, visiting thrift stores, drawing, making my game, you know, that kind of thing. I’ve been very creative recently so it’s been fun. Been finding new musicals, too. You should totally listen to them! Omg yeah we should totes go out one day!”
snowghoul
kianamaiart
gummygunk
tangentwithtanner
areudirty
germansingergirl
jbbartram-illu
titsay
blakekathryn
